How the Heck did I end up in Antarctica?

People have been saying I need to post just how it came to be that I find myself below the Antarctic circle. It's an interesting story, a quite complex one that involves a lot of people and a fair amount of luck. There were two major outside factions of people (the Ildi crowd and the Lael/CofI crowd) that helped me end up here. I don't think I could have gotten the job without Ildi and I don't think I would have put myself out there asking so much if I hadn't heard from Lael and Holcomb how hard it was to get a job and I wouldn't have even known much about the job had it not been for Lael and her aunt.

The story of me coming down here starts way way back. Back in elementary school I already had wanted to come to Antarctica. I love snow, ice, and cold, not to mention mountains and adventure. So even way back then I knew I wanted to go. And before that, I must have subconciously known I wanted to go b/c one of my first highly cuddled stuffed animals as a baby was a penguin.

Then as a freshman in high school, our first major research project was to do this whole big paper and project on a dream destination. Most people picked places like tahiti, hawaii, italy, australia, and thailand, but I chose to do mine on Antarctica. After I did that I knew for sure I wanted to go there. The problem is that to vacation or travel to Antarctica is rediculously expensive, so I knew I had to get there some other way.

Fast foward to my senior year at the college of Idaho where I met the wonderful and amazing Lael. She knew I was interested in going and told me about her aunt Jules who is like a goddess down here (she's work over 30 years and is like the lady of McMurdo). Lael and Jules told me about how you can actually get paid to live and work in Antarctica and that it was through Raytheon. I went to hang out with Jules and Lael at Jules' home in Garden Valley, ID a couple of times to hear about it, and then after I had graduated, Lael worked it to have me drive her aunt's van from Denver up to Boise after she had been deployed. This in and of itself was awesome b/c I got a free ride up to Boise to see my homies, but it helped to cement my into Jule's memory.

As the years went on, I continued to want to work there. I watched as several friends including Lael, Holcomb, and Meg went down there, and I gathered as much information from them as I could. The main theme being that you really needed to have some sort of help or in to just make it through the HR hiring process to get to the hiring managers themselves. I pestered these poor people as well as a few other friends of friends to try and get all the info I could. But the process seemed difficult, and I knew it would be very tough to get a job.

My plan, my perfect little plan was after my two years of travelling in Asia to get a job in Antarctica and then go to grad school. It would work perfectly b/c I wouldn't be able to get into school this year so I was going to have the winter free, just the time I needed to go to Antarctica. I just somehow had to make it happen.

My luck came when I met jumping Polly, from McCall, ID on a trek in Nepal. I was telling her and her boyfriend (blanking on the name) that I wanted to go really bad to Antarctica the next winter and they said they knew a lot of people in McCall who had gone and they gave me Ildi's email address. I thought was the heck, I'll email her, but I doubt that she'll help me much other than the typical, you need to apply on midnight of march 1, mainly b/c she didn't even know me.
But it turns out she was a blessing. She wrote novels to me abotu how to apply. She edited my resumes and cover letters and gave me pointers for them. She sent me the HR job requirments far far in advance of the deadline so that I could tailor my resume to them and have my recommenders tailor their letters to them as well (one of my recommenders was Lael who wrote an amazing letter, by the way). She also mentioned my name around base a little bit and just gave me tons of tips. She helped psyche me up for my interview with Kris as well. She was so helpul. Seriously like my Antarctica angel. And I would also like to mention that since I've been here, she has been so great to me as well. Making me a hat, baking me cookies, always looking out for me, inviting me to the special parties, and always giving me that warm huge smile she has and her big hug as well. She has to be one of the most geuninely nicest person I have ever met.

Something that I was thinking back upon was how much luck and/or fate I had in being able to even meet up with jumping Polly so that I could then get Ildi's contact info. A lot of crazy little things happened, involving several people, that made it so I ended up on top of the mountain at Ghorepani in nepal with jumping polly.

Upon entering Nepal is when the chain of events all happened. Before that everything in my travelling had pretty much gone as planned. When I got to nepal, I planned to only stay in Kathmandu for a couple of days before I headed out to climb Mera peak. But I had some medical issues where I needed to get the CAT scan before I booked my trip and then once I booked my climb we had to hang out in Kathmandu at the airport for 4 days while we waited. The climb went pretty smooth and afterwards I left my group to continue on to the Everest Base Camp. Again, I had awesome weather and everything went smooth until I got to Gokyo lake. Here I got caught in a snowstorm (luckily with the awesome Norwegian Pumori climbing team), so I "wasted" a day here waiting for the weather to clear so I could climb gokyo ri. On my 2nd to last day of the trek, I got a bad bacterial gut infection so that when I got back to Kathmandu, I had to postpone my rafting (and thus annapurna trekking) by a couple days to recover. After I got back from rafting I made a bee-line to Pokhara and right away began my annapurna sanctuary trek. B/c I was worried I may have to wait out a storm again while up at the annapurna base camp, I tried to add another day into my schedule my doing a really long day on of the days, doing what normally is a two day hike in 1 day. Turns out the weather was fine, so I got back down to one of the lower villages (blanking on the name) early. There a sign enticing me with fresh apple and chocolate cake enticed me to stay at a particular guesthouse. Here I met Sam from Colorado Springs. She told me how great Ghorepani was and how it would be worth it to wait extra days there in order to see the views. She also told me of a specific guesthouse to stay there that woudl be amazing. So I hurriedly (two days of hiking)got to Ghorepani and went to the guesthouse Sam had told me to go to. At the guesthouse I met Carolina from Chile who was an awesome gal and she invited me to go on the hike to poon hill with her and two idahoans, who turned out to be jumping polly and her boyfriend.
So it's crazy b/c of any of those things like weather, sickness, or meeting people wouldn't have happened...just one little thing then I wouldn't have met polly and thus been introduced to Ildi.

Amazing how the world works!